Airport Security Measures

Many new ideas have been conceived since changes have begun in the airline industry several years ago. Some alternatives to the current, cockpit doors and bag checks are as follows. First, adding additional EDS (Explosive Detection System) and ETD (Explosive Trace Detection) to airports. However, this is very costly and would require a large amount of space to be available for these large machines. Also, if a machine malfunctions, it will cause enormous delays. According to Viggo Butler and Robert W. Poole Jr., to run an all ETD system, it would cost $3 billion and would require 50,000 people to operate. While an all EDS system would cost $12 billion and would require 6,000 machines. However, in the next few years, technology will improve and these machines will be of no use. Therefore it would be unwise to invest in this alternative. As of now the only other alternatives that are approved are hand searches and dog-search which are both time consuming and labor-intensive. Another alternative suggested by Rafi Ron, security director at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel for five years, is that you need to privatize airport security. According to Ron, you let the government set the rules and regulations, as well as oversee. However, you hire a private company to do the labor. This has proved to be effective in a high-risk airport such as Belfast in Northern Ireland. The downfall of this alternative is to assure the traveling public that there is genuine accountability. You may also mention in a research paper that each airport would have a different company working as its security staff. A secondary consequence of this would be disagreements between the government and the private staff as to how to run the security.

Our writers will provide you with a detailed custom essay covering approaches to deal with airport security. One more approach to dealing with better airport security is this idea of 'bag matching'. This includes a program called: computer-assisted passenger pre-screening (CAPPS). In this system, all travelers would be registered in a program and then sorted into at least three different risk groups-and matching baggage-inspection technologies appropriately to each group. There would be Level 1 inspection along with Levels 2 and 3. All bags would go through level one, and questionable bags would then also go through level 2 and then if necessary level 3. There is also a similar program called-100 percent positive passenger bag match (PPBM). The idea of this particular alternative is that every person has a bag under the plane, if the bag goes on but the passenger does not, the bag is removed. The concept behind this is that terrorists want to survive their attacks so they can repeat their efforts and scare as many people possible, according to Bonnie Wilson, vice president of airport facilities and services for Airport Council International-North America (ACI-NA). Some of the setbacks for these alternatives are that there are such things as 'suicide bombers' who don't care if they lose their life if they take others with them. Also, fake or stolen identities could be a loophole in CAPPS. A secondary consequence of something like this would be longer check-in times and delayed flights. The final alternative would be the use of voice stress analysis and biometrics, such as fingerprint readers and iris scanners, to prevent dangerous persons from boarding an aircraft and to verify the identity of airport workers entering secure areas. With this system, a camera would take your picture and convert the image into a faceprint, then compare that digital image to those stored in a centralized, local database or on a smart ID card. This would be very effective and have little, if any problems. The secondary consequences of implementing a system like this would have to rebuild or reconstruct the airports to accommodate this type of system. Also updating this system every time you got a new employee would be very strenuous.